The Myth of Gypsum Magic

[BuckeyeGreen]

I’ve met Linda, been to several of her seminars and seen her reclamation projects where she and her group turned destroyed sites into beautiful, lush sites. She is very knowledgeable, open minded and willing to investigate anything to do with plant life.
Her book, How Plants Work is excellent. If what she says about gypsum bothers you, don’t get her started on, foliar feeding, compost teas etc. You won’t like it.
You can find pdfs she has done on many gardening topics and myth busting here:

Linda Chalker-Scott | Washington State University

Horticultural Myths Looking for the newest myth-information? Check out our blog The Garden Professors. You’ll find science-based information from four horticultural professors from around the country. Fertilizers The Myth of Beneficial Bone Meal (pdf) The Myth of Vitamin Shots (pdf) The Myth of...

puyallup.wsu.edu

 

[BuckeyeGreen]

Here is Linda’s bio. for those of you who wonder, who the hell does she think she is or she doesn’t know what she is talking about:

https://puyallup.wsu.edu/lcs/documents/2022/06/curriculum-vitae.pdf/

She knows what she is doing.

 

[Ca++]

Thanks.

I use very limited amounts of both gypsum and dolomite lime, relying more heavily on low-magnesium garden lime mined locally; about 95% lime.

There's a bit of zeolite in my mixes these days, and other CE boosters.

The magnesium and sulfur, as well as salts, have been found to come from several sources, and I spent a good amount of time purposefully trying to decrease those things in the mix that carried inordinate and/or redundant amounts of those items.

I also have fairly hard H2O (well water) with a total hardness of about 380 last time I did a serious analysis for toxins, heavy metals, hardness, minerals, etc. about 95ppm calcium carbonate, if I recall correct

170ppm of the 225ppm of hardness from my tap, is calcium carbonate.
Seeing just 25% of your hardness is calcium, How much is Mg?
In hydro we really don't want over 100 for any strain. I can't find what I was actually looking for, but think I have about 450 on one site. It seems to grow rather squat plants, with rather tight buds. Not like my other sites, and I like the outcome.

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

What a coincidence, the paper which you quoted

I didn't quote any paper. At the ripe old age of 73 I've been gardening for 50 years. If I haven't got it down pat now, I never will.

Gardeners don't usually need supplements, and when they apply them in a soil less mix they're just shooting from the hip, not really knowing what they're doing regarding plant nutrition.

Folks would do well to be familiar with the concept of nutrient antagonism. It's like smoking pot, drinking or eating....moderation is key. Example, as you hit your faves late in the season with high P foods you tend to lock out N and micros. I see way too many plants in these forums that look like they've been run over by a Mack truck - yellowed, twisted or dried up fan leaves. And no, that's not normal.

If you have a saline soil in native outdoor sites then yes, applications Ca, in any form, will help. That's a rare case.

Uncle Ben

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

When my garden was poisoned with round up I immediately turned the ground under my trees white with gypsum then watered like crazy before applying fulvic acid. I saved most of my trees.

How in the hell did you "poison" your ground with glyphosate? When mixed according to the label (it's the law), the PPM is so low that it's impossible to harm the soil including soil microbes which feed on it. In fact, glyphosate UNDER NORMAL APPLICABLE CIRCUMSTANCES is rendered inert when it makes contact with soil, especially clayey soils.

I've been applying it for decades and never had any soil issues. I even spot spray weeds that pop up in my big greenshouse pots.

I chemically burn tree rings around my shade trees with glyphosate at least 3X a year. They are very vigorous growers. Planted 65 trees around the place when I custom built my home 17 years ago.

Fulvic acid, as a correcting agent?

Young pecan tree flowering in the spring.

Uncle Ben

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Here is Linda’s bio. for those of you who wonder, who the hell does she think she is or she doesn’t know what she is talking about:

https://puyallup.wsu.edu/lcs/documents/2022/06/curriculum-vitae.pdf/

She knows what she is doing.

She's the best.

Here's another great myth busting site: https://www.gardenmyths.com/fertilizer-myths-save-money/#more-8362

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

I have sent many soil samples to this lab. Also had them do a couple of well water tests (coming out of a drought and during a normal season to check my aquifer quality) before and after a water softener. Folks, know where you are, so you can empower yourselves to get to where you want to go.

Soil & Soil Health Analysis - Ward Laboratories, Inc.

www.wardlab.com

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

When seeking advice re flushing out roundup from soil a nutrient specialist told me gypsum would acidify soil due to the presence of sulfur. Completely contrary to this the gypsum bag had on it 'will not alter soil ph'.

I use gypsum mostly to improve soil drainage ... and it does.

I'm in lime country and it never fails, the Saturday morning gardening talk show hosts always recommend gypsum to "loosen up hard clay soils" when someone calls in. Best to add sulfur to chemically combine with the free lime to create gypsum. Adding more Ca doesn't make sense.

And Ca being a base is normally basic. S is normally acidic. It's an issue of the individual components being strongly/weakly acid or strongly/weakly basic regarding the end salt they create and its affect. CaSO4

Want to solve the entire Ca/Mg confusion with a one shot food, water or soil/soil less culture? Dyna-Gro Foliage-Pro, start to finish.

I use DG when I feel the need for it..... both for a soil drench and a foliar spray in the vineyard. I use Keyplus DP350 as a tonic and for the contains micros. https://dyna-gro.com/product/foliage-pro/

Organic purists, take note of the science behind this product. You'll have to buy it from a distributor, a regional salesman. https://www.keyplex.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/KeyPlex-350DP.pdf

Uncle Ben

 

[mexcurandero420]

How much to add to potting soil?

 

[jahshaka]

Myth? Did someone say myth? I love myths!



Is Slownickel the reason why every grow I look at the past 10 years has thick leathery ribbed blue-gray leaves with white midribs purple petioles & roasted margins? Isn't he the guy that bought up all the athletic field marker for next to nothing and sells it as specialized foliar spray that oxidizes the plants leaf flora and doesn't travel through the phloem whatsoever?

Douglass Curtis has the idea. Spoon feed soluble calcium aka athletic field marker plus citric or ethanoic. Otherwise you won't be able to get rid of the shit come finish. Personally I won't feed calcium without feeding everything that calcium antagonizes, which is plenty.

You will go broke at finish trying to cram enough potassium sulfate into the plant after turning your soil into limestone. "Oh no the water runs out the sides of me fabric bag, and what's this white crust all over me fabric bag". Too late for phosphorus by the time you've heard more calcium is good for buds, especially indoors under the gavita led standard. Sap tests show that not even the sulfur is being taken up in these hypercalcemic soils everyone with a nute startup is pushing on weed nute victims.

The congenital epigenetic impact the bro fertilizer community has had on the cannabis gene pool is devastating, from the fact breeders cull plants that refuse to adapt to hypercalcemic nutrient regimens, choosing your Blue Chalk Dreamsicles over Sour Blueberry Skunkbutts. To the shift in lipid profiles caused by driving nitrogen with calcium but not driving calcium with boron, resulting in all the dough batter stale muffin expressions in plants that typically smelled like carboxylic acids and low carbon thiols for thousands of years. To the fact that sweet and sour associations no longer correlate with P:K input when sugar/acid ratios were commonly steered to match cultivar.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.

youtube.com

Doesn't appear to be toxic, Bruce? Then why the hell is Cannabis unable to take up potassium when Ca is 8% in leaf tissue? And where is that calcium in leaf tissue? What percentage is exogenous, being exuded into trichome structure, what percentage is in sap?

Anyone thinking about selling chalk or drywall as fertilizer: Turn off the youtubes, stop stalking grow forums for feedback on how to scam nute victims, and read a book once in a while. Be a good actor not someone who talks circles around potheads and cancer patients. Live in reality, not in dogma that's been proven untrue long ago. Societies problem, leaders staying one lesson ahead of followers, a society like this doesn't last long when the lessons are not based in observable reality. Example: Women don't have testicles, I don't care how friendly and well studied the messenger is. You're destroying society.

View attachment 18831942

Unmetabolized excess calcium is the biggest detriment I've found to Cannabis quality. Especially when it binds with carbonate and builds trichome walls. I bet everyone pushing excess calcium nutes as a trend also sells silica sprays and hippy pesticides, you're gonna need em growing in soil that turns white when it dries out. Enjoy the pretty white roots with no fine hairs and no colonization. They grow like that trying to get away from the lime deposit they've been forced into.

Eventually someone will figure out how to turn Gypsum into calcium acetate, so you can keep the sulfur. Not sure who's overdosing on sulfur. Guys drinking sesame oil and shitting in their soil beds I recon.

Or better yet, the guys who bought up all the basic slag will eventually figure out how to turn it into a bottled product. But then they can't sell you TM7.. Hmm... There's always a downside to progression, isn't there.

Too long didn't read: Why are people pushing excess calcium when all it does is lock out shit and ruin the expression of the plant? Because some guy from the ag sector talked about tomatoes on a podcast, then some stoner started his own podcast and repeated it about Cannabis. TalkingTomatoes, that might be the name of my new podcast..

Mate respectfully, you have mastered the ability to chat shite.

Nobodys telling anyone to dump a truck of gypsum or lime into there grow. You talk like your above everyone with that pomp talk. Countless people have seen the benefits to well balanced calcium applications. It seems to me people just cannot give props to people that have been sharing valuable info from way back.

In your own post it references "Disease severity was greatest when calcium and Boron were deficient."
In slow's defence he has told me to up the B ppm's considerably. Along side other micros's. to keep up the applied Ca. There is more to it for sure when to back off when to load up are important factors.
Your post just craps on people that have contributed to helping grow stronger healthier plants. Not anywhere in your post have you proposed your alternative nutrient regime that is better or simpler.

Lose the elitest attitude and share a better alternative. Everyone's all ears then

 

[moose eater]

170ppm of the 225ppm of hardness from my tap, is calcium carbonate.
Seeing just 25% of your hardness is calcium, How much is Mg?
In hydro we really don't want over 100 for any strain. I can't find what I was actually looking for, but think I have about 450 on one site. It seems to grow rather squat plants, with rather tight buds. Not like my other sites, and I like the outcome.

I don't believe there's a lot of Mag in there. I'd have to go back and check to be more confident of my statement, but I believe the Mag was scant.

There's some zinc in there, for sure, but even then, when I've done my H2O analyses, I've still ended up adding zinc to my mixes.

My target per discussions with others (if I get motivated, off my ass, and replace the funky, likely now contaminated RO system hanging on the wall in the basement with the newer RO/DI system I bought from Air, Water and Ice an embarrassing number of years ago, still sitting in the closet) would be a total hardness of 150. That's been stated to be the ideal base hardness for cannabis water.

My loose figuring was that if I ran about 50% to 60% RO/DI into the trash can, and the rest in untreated well water, I'd have something closer to my ideal target of 150 in total hardness. Close to what I'd done in years past.

When I've used or blended RO in the past, it's been in a 33-gallon Rubbermaid Roughneck trash container, with tubing for 'finished' RO/water from the RO/DI unit to the trash can, and wastewater to the utility sink, with back feed for a switch to the utility sink.

Old-school shutoffs for such a system often continued to run the RO system, simply diverting it down the drain with the wastewater, whereas the shutoff kit I acquired with this kit is a true shut-off system. Much more acceptable, in my opinion.

In the old days, maybe close to 20 years ago, there were times I'd fall asleep in the night, tired of waiting for the can to fill, or tired in general, leaving what was typically a -very- slow RO system running, only to wake up and find my basement slab a fair bit more wet than when I passed out. Hostile moments ensued.

Memories of that sort and aging, among other issues, have kept the newer RO/DI system in the original shipping box in the bottom of the hallway closet. I'll either get going one day in a spurt of productivity, or it'll make a great inheritance for someone who asks, "What the fuck do I need this for??"

In the rather LENGTHY interim, lately I've been typically knocking back the ph of feed and other water to between 6.1 and 6.4 whenever possible, and it's made a noteworthy difference.

 

[experienced]

How in the hell did you "poison" your ground with glyphosate? When mixed according to the label (it's the law), the PPM is so low that it's impossible to harm the soil including soil microbes which feed on it. In fact, glyphosate UNDER NORMAL APPLICABLE CIRCUMSTANCES is rendered inert when it makes contact with soil, especially clayey soils.

I've been applying it for decades and never had any soil issues. I even spot spray weeds that pop up in my big greenshouse pots.

View attachment 18832235 I chemically burn tree rings around my shade trees with glyphosate at least 3X a year. They are very vigorous growers. Planted 65 trees around the place when I custom built my home 17 years ago.

Fulvic acid, as a correcting agent?

Young pecan tree flowering in the spring.

Uncle Ben

Perhaps a touch of lateral thinking would help understanding here:

I did not apply ANY glyphosate. The glyphosate was applied by a neighbour. He used a firefighter backpack and squirted the poison directly on the ground all around. (He is connected to a corrupt local government agency which purchases glyphosate 1000 litres at a time.)

While glyphosate is water soluble thus leaches away quickly, the wetting agent is an acid called AMPA. It binds with the soil and interferes with plant growth for years depending on the fertility of the soil. (I guess bacteria in the soil degrades AMPA.)

Yes your image shows typical glyphosate use. If you've ever wondered about slow growth after applying glyphosate ... think AMPA.

 

[moose eater]

I don't believe there's a lot of Mag in there. I'd have to go back and check to be more confident of my statement, but I believe the Mag was scant.

There's some zinc in there, for sure, but even then, when I've done my H2O analyses, I've still ended up adding zinc to my mixes.

My target per discussions with others (if I get motivated, off my ass, and replace the funky, likely now contaminated RO system hanging on the wall in the basement with the newer RO/DI system I bought from Air, Water and Ice an embarrassing number of years ago, still sitting in the closet) would be a total hardness of 150. That's been stated to be the ideal base hardness for cannabis water.

My loose figuring was that if I ran about 50% to 60% RO/DI into the trash can, and the rest in untreated well water, I'd have something closer to my ideal target of 150 in total hardness. Close to what I'd done in years past.

When I've used or blended RO in the past, it's been in a 33-gallon Rubbermaid Roughneck trash container, with tubing for 'finished' RO/water from the RO/DI unit to the trash can, and wastewater to the utility sink, with back feed for a switch to the utility sink.

Old-school shutoffs for such a system often continued to run the RO system, simply diverting it down the drain with the wastewater, whereas the shutoff kit I acquired with this kit is a true shut-off system. Much more acceptable, in my opinion.

In the old days, maybe close to 20 years ago, there were times I'd fall asleep in the night, tired of waiting for the can to fill, or tired in general, leaving what was typically a -very- slow RO system running, only to wake up and find my basement slab a fair bit more wet than when I passed out. Hostile moments ensued.

Memories of that sort and aging, among other issues, have kept the newer RO/DI system in the original shipping box in the bottom of the hallway closet. I'll either get going one day in a spurt of productivity, or it'll make a great inheritance for someone who asks, "What the fuck do I need this for??"

In the rather LENGTHY interim, lately I've been typically knocking back the ph of feed and other water to between 6.1 and 6.4 whenever possible, and it's made a noteworthy difference.

By the way, and to add another curve ball of quizzical nature to my soilless mixes and H2O chemistry and analysis, my untreated well water, at the tap, routing flow around the softener for testing (via ball valves and rerouting), and letting it run a good while to better cleanse any residuals from the pipes, is almost right on 7 ph; maybe 7.1-ish.

Go figger'.

When we had delivered water to a holding tank buried outside, originating from an underground aquifer near Fox Springs, and then minimally treated for commercial sale/delivery, my plants thrived, using little more than aerated bat guano teas and kelp meal for the most part where any later added fertilizers were concerned.

With the changes in H2O, organic amendments changing in composition and quality over time, etc., the whole thing became a multi-year rabbit hole and mind fuck... Now thankfully much closer to resolution.

And yes, less is almost always more.

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Perhaps a touch of lateral thinking would help understanding here:

I did not apply ANY glyphosate. The glyphosate was applied by a neighbour. He used a firefighter backpack and squirted the poison directly on the ground all around. (He is connected to a corrupt local government agency which purchases glyphosate 1000 litres at a time.)

While glyphosate is water soluble thus leaches away quickly, the wetting agent is an acid called AMPA. It binds with the soil and interferes with plant growth for years depending on the fertility of the soil. (I guess bacteria in the soil degrades AMPA.)

Yes your image shows typical glyphosate use. If you've ever wondered about slow growth after applying glyphosate ... think AMPA.

Never been a problem. Reason why I have to apply it about 3X a year for weed control is because it has no residual affect. BTW, the turf is a hybrid bermuda.

What is AMPA? I use 41% glyphosate in a generic product. Glystar or Erasure. They contain a surfactant, probably NIS. I add more NIS and ammonium sulfate to really kick the burn.

Uncle Ben

 

[G.O. Joe]

More expense and long term effect ignorant bullshit from the unidolized caste, this time in acidic porous near-desert soils - raising the bar to heresy -

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Lime and Gypsum Applications on Acid Soils in a Water-Limited Environment: 1. Grain Yield Response and Nutrient Concentration

Surface (0–10 cm) and subsoil (soil layers below 10 cm) acidity and resulting aluminum (Al) toxicity reduce crop grain yields. In South Western Australia (SWA), these constraints affect 14.2 million hectares or 53% of the agricultural area. Both lime (L, CaCO3) and gypsum (G, CaSO4) application...

doi.org

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Lime and Gypsum Applications on Acid Soils in a Water-Limited Environment: 2. Soil Chemical Properties

Soil acidity or aluminum (Al) toxicity is a major limitation to crop production. In this paper, we examine the effects of surface-applied lime and gypsum on soil profile chemical properties that affect Al toxicity in short-term (1 year), medium-term (2 years and 8 months) and long-term (10...

doi.org

complete with ignorant bullshit references newer than the first.

I didn't quote any paper.

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

I see very few garden pix around this place to back up positions, just the typical chest beating on way too many topics that have no real world value.

Curious @G.O. Joe you garden? Links to your stuff if you don't mind.

Uncle Ben

 

[moose eater]

 

[dramamine]

Kaboom!

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Looking good!

 

[moose eater]

Looking good!

Thanks. Those are last Spring's/Summer's results of years of wrestling with hard water and changing organic amendments.

Many of the amendments and additions I've referenced went into those plants.

The 3rd, 5th, and 6th from the top are Arjan's original Greenhouse Seeds Super Lemon Haze, from clone to clone, nearing 20+ years old.